Commentary: Five Problems Our Council Needs to Address This Term

The last Davis City Council needs more credit than they have received so far. Maybe it was the lack of cheerleading on the part of council in trumpeting their accomplishments. Maybe it was the changeover in editors at the local paper that took away perspective from the community voice. Or maybe it is the fact that there are so many problems that remain intractable.

In any case, there is a long list of problems our new council will need to address. I have listed five and cheated a bit in combining several into one.

These are by no means in any sort of order…

Affordable Housing

The cost of living in Davis is increasingly out of the reach of average families. The loss of RDA (Redevelopment Agency) funding looms much larger now than even a few years ago.

When we talk about affordable housing, it is important to note we are talking about the need for housing in a number of different categories. Affordable housing does not just mean subsidized.

Middle class people, people making between 80 and 120 percent of median income, increasingly cannot afford to live in Davis. Those are people making $60 to $100 thousand a year. They have kids. Those kids would attend our schools.

We need to look into a variety of solutions, from subsidized options to affordability by design and perhaps even affordability by supply.

This is not a Davis-only problem, but Davis, like many other communities, will need to find its own solution.

City-UC Davis Relations

We have discussed this a lot in recent weeks as the LRDP (Long Range Development Plan) process wraps up, as the city and university start to wrangle over impacts and potential mitigation. The reality is that the city and university are at odds with each other on a number of aspects of the LRDP process.

The good news is the agreement to go through a mediation process. The bad news is that, increasingly, the university is looking elsewhere for expansion opportunities.

A strong collaborative relationship allows the city and university to work together on areas of mutual interest while addressing, in an amicable way, their differences. An adversarial relationship could mean things like litigation and settlement agreements that solve the need for mitigation and student housing concerns, but mean conflict and a rocky relationship.

As we pointed out this week, the city has an interest in supporting university goals, they have an interest in collaborating with the university and they need the university on issues like economic development. The question is – can we put aside our past conflict and our present differences and work together for mutual benefit?

Budget

This could have been three separate items. There are three key areas that need to be addressed: cost containment, economic development, and roads and infrastructure funding.

Cost containment is critical to the budget concerns and any talk about revenue enhancement. Without containing costs, new revenues will immediately get absorbed into current costs and our $8 million ongoing shortfall will either expand or, at the very least, not shrink.

One of the key discussions will have to be how much should employee compensation grow. The current MOUs illustrate the problem. There are those who argue that the city had the capacity to take on annual rates of compensation growth at two percent. But others have pushed back, arguing that a two percent salary increase annually is higher than that when total compensation comes into play.

While supporters of the MOU will argue that Bob Leland’s model anticipated two percent, others push back and suggest that we gave away two percent when Mr. Leland’s model saw that as the ceiling that might be unavoidable.

A big focus for the Vanguard will be economic development. We believe that without new revenue, the standard of living and amenities in Davis are unsustainable. The city has lost some momentum in this respect and the rest of the region has taken up the initiative.

Too many economic development issues have gotten bogged down in land use debates. From our perspective, the key will be clearing the way to push for economic development by eliminating land use disputes and separating the two processes, as well as the need for leadership from the city on this front.

Finally, the city is reeling from the loss of Measure I. That measure was not going to solve the roads problem, but it would have funded a huge chunk of our ongoing needs. Realistically, the loss of Measure I sets us back by four years, at least. The council now has to find money and savings to fund our roads and figure out how to fund other infrastructure.

Homelessness

Addressing homeless issues was a point of emphasis in Davis the last two years. But we have a long way to go. Davis is by no means alone in this respect, but once again each community will have to figure out a way. One of the big hurdles is getting services to the people in need and then finding ways to shelter them. Funding is going to be a huge challenge, and it is one of the reasons why former Mayor Robb Davis pushed for a small homeless parcel tax. That proposal died before it got to the ballot, and the next council will have to figure out whether to revive it.

Davis Downtown

The Core Area Specific Plan figures to be a huge issue. The community seems divided on what to do and that will make moving forward a big challenge.

Many love the downtown, but, from the perspective of some, we have seen the decline of retail. From the perspective of others, we lack enough public spaces. From the perspective of still others, it is an underutilized area with many single-story buildings that could be redeveloped into mixed use.

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

52 thoughts on “Commentary: Five Problems Our Council Needs to Address This Term”

That proposal died before it got to the ballot and the next council will have to figure out whether to revive it.

Why do you think it died? Because it had no chance of passing. Voters didn’t even pass a road tax for something everyone can pretty much agree with that’s needed. Put simply the people feel they’re overtaxed and have hit the wall. Any homeless parcel tax is dead on arrival.

The voters have already learned (the hard way) that much of any new general tax will be blown on city employee compensation. So any new tax proposal that isn’t iron clad earmarked for what the voters are being asked for will be a hard sell.

Are you saying that Davis voters are ignorant when it comes to parcel taxes? I think it would be an easy sell for anyone opposing a general tax proposal to point out the fact that the money went to other things than what they were told.

David Greenwald said . . . “We need to look into a variety of solutions from subsidized options to affordability by design and perhaps even affordability by supply.”

Subsidized Options — where is the money going to come from in order to provide the subsidies?

Affordability by Design — in a Planning Commission meeting regarding Lincoln 40 Commission Chair Rob Hoffman cautioned that Affordability by Design is a figment of the imagination. Construction costs per square foot are not going to decrease based on an architect’s design. Davis regulations mandate higher costs that can not be designed out of a project. Rob concluded his remarks by saying thet we can achive reduced housing costs by pursuing Affordability by Size … designing residences that have fewer square feet of living space per occupant. Rob’s suggestion, which I wholeheatedly concur with, can not be accomplished by City Council. It has to be accomplished by the housing supply/demand marketplace. Students can achieve fewer square feet of living space per occupant by sharing their room with another student. Home buyers/renters can achieve fewer square feet by buying/renting smaller homes. The construction loans industry can facilitate fewer square feet fewer square feet of living space per occupant by loosening restrictions on financing … restrictions tyhat are driven by fear of competitive advantage that projects with more living space per occupant are perceived to have. Those are all changes that Council can only nibble at the edges of.

Affordability by Supply — That three-word sound bite needs some meat on its bones. What do you mean by Affordability by Supply?

The elephant in the tent that this article does not address is contained in the statement “Middle class people, people making between 80 and 120 percent of median income increasingly cannot afford to live in Davis. Those are people making $60 to $100 thousand a year. They have kids. Those kids would attend our schools.” The reality of Davis demographics, conmfirmed by the trends in the US Census numbers for Davis is that the people who fit that description fall in the Census age group between 25 and 54 years old, and that age group is shrinking (by 1,540 people between 2000 and 2010) and their children’s ager group is shrinking too (by 843 people between 2000 and 2010). Why is that happening? One of the most important reasons is a lack of $60 to $100 thousand a year middle class jobs in Davis, and perhaps even more importantly the lack of $100 thousand to $150 thousand a year jobs that are the logical outcome of the intellectual capital creation at UCD. Our economy is single threaded … government jobs at UCD and across the Causeway in Sacramento.

Second, in terms of the where on the subsidies, that is the key question. Existing money comes from (1) developers and in lieu fees, (2) whatever is in the affordable housing fund, (3) there may be state money available from SB3 if the proposition passes in November. So where else? Three ideas: (1) go to more in lieu fees rather than on-site affordable housing; (2) the state once there is a new governor pass a new increment tax; (3) local affordable housing parcel tax. Then the fourth is the catchall – unforeseen innovative approach.

Third, affordability by supply means attempting to add enough housing to reduce the cost of housing. People including me are skeptical of the possibility of this.

Regarding your thoughts on subsidies, what each variation you propose boils down to “Make housing less affordable for one segment of the population so it can be more affordable for another segment of the population.” In simple terms each solution uses people’s pocketbooks to achieve social engineering. Programs like that take a long time to happen, and they generate a lot of political resistance and increased distrust.

Interestingly, you have not listed the most immediately available source of subsidies … UCD students subsidizing themselves. The politically masterful Nishi Affordability Program is a tangible example of a “Students Subsidizing Students” program. Each student who chooses to share a room with another student creates two subsidies without making housing less affordable for anyone, and without political resistance or increased distrust.

Here’s a mathematical/fiscal challenge for you to solve and share the solution with your readers. Specifically, if 10,000 UCD student renters in the City of Davis converted their one-student per room residence into a two-student per room residence (like the dormitory room they lived in Freshman year) how much “subsidy capital” would be created?

This is also true, but one of the greatest costs for new housing in Davis is the price of land, so we will get more benefit by utilizing land more efficiently by building at greater densities, with townhouses and stacked flat condos. Subdivisions of detached single-family homes will never be ‘affordable.’

Mark, if one looks at the component costs of the Nishi project approved by voters, what percentage of Whitcombe and Ruff’s total costs do you think price of land is? If you use a hypothetical price per acre of somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 times the 47 acres you get a land cost in the vicinity of $2 million to $2.5 million. The Measure J Ballot Argument discussions by Tim Ruff put the total expected Assessed Valuation at approximately $250 million. That would mean that land costs are approximately 1% of the total.

Note: current raw land costs for orchard farmland range between $15,000 per acre and $25,000 per acre, up from between $10,000 and $15,000 per acre. The $40,000 to $50,000 per acre figure may be subject to similar price inflation, but even if it doubled to between $80,000 and $100,000 per acre, the percentage of the project costs only rises from 1% to 2%.

Bare land is worth considerably more once it has been annexed and as the City has approved exactly one annexation in the past 20 years, the calculation needs to be based on the value of existing land inside the City limits. In addition, the community has deemed that land outside the City has much greater intrinsic value (to the community) as farmland than is reflected in the sales price. We have passed both Measures J/R and O to support this view. Making the calculation based on the value of farmland outside the City limits without taking into account the costs of gaining approval for annexation and the necessary changes in zoning and the costs to the developer for construction of new city infrastructure to support the development is poppyc–k.

Mark West said . . . “the calculation needs to be based on the value of existing land inside the City limits.”

The problem with that method Mark is that the land inside the City Limits does not need to undergo the extensive cost of infrastructure construction, or the cost of obtaining entitlements, or the cost of one-time fees and taxes extracted by the City and County. Virtually all those costs that are over and above actual land costs have already been expended by the owner, or the owner’s predecessor(s).

However, let’s engage your proposition. What do you believe the per acre land costs are for land that is currently inside the City Limits? $500,000 per acre?

Thanks for posting that Ken. It is a very useful comparison. Next time I’m in Woodland I will check with the County Clerk’s office and see what New Home Company paid ConAgra per acre.

At that ~$3 million per acre figure the 47 acres of Nishi would have a cost of ~$147 million, which is about 56% of Tim Ruff’s $260 million valuation. 56% actually complies with Mark’s original assertion “

To clarify… not just PS… finance, engineers, planners, secretaries/admin, HR, recreation, etc. staff have seen adjustments… the folk who have ‘boots on the ground’ (safety-toed boots, BTW), who fix the water main breaks, make sure the water, drainage and sewer systems function so well that it is a “given” that folk don’t think about that, except in isolated instances, who maintain, operate and repair the traffic signals…

No change in MOU (imposed) since 2012 (except give-backs), and per David, appears those are “sunk” employee ‘costs’, and at most, would merit a 2% increase each year moving forward, and implied that it should be significantly less than that.

OK. What is the intrinsic value of retention (institutional knowledge of systems) or morale, anyway? Zero, it appears… (at current pace)

Better we focus on making sure teachers are paid “appropriately”… ‘convenient” to David’s priorities…

“Convenient” in that by saying 2% total comp increases would be the “cap”, and that many opine that is unsustainable, DCEA should content themselves with zero salary increases from 2012 (effective date of imposition) and, perhaps forever…

Yet you seem to champion increases to teachers to give them parity with other districts… yet, not within your adopted hometown City employees… whatever… you have your interests/priorities… fine.

Sacramento is a city; Davis is not. There’s no way to compete in the “city” category, so it’s only natural that UC Davis wanted Aggie Square where it is. We need to make Davis part of Sacramento, organized but informally. One of the best things we could do in this regard would be to make it free and easy to travel between Davis and Sac by public transport (and cycling).

It seems like a good way to do this would be build a railway and highway across the Yolo Bypass. The railway would have fare free passenger service between Davis and Sacramento, paid for by reasonable fares for using the highway between the cities, discounted via tax credits or similar for locals and those with economic challenges, while deeply incentivizing carpooling and – for a time – fully electric vehicles.

This Davis-Sacramento Multi-Modal Corridor would be a notable innovation — proof that one of the most important state capitols and a world-class university with its host city don’t have to make the mistakes of cities all over by allowing a privately-controlled railway infrastructure provider and a state and federal highway aggregate to control beyond reason the means of mobility.

Obviously the railway should be electrified, eventually, and if the highway goes through the middle of town it should have significant structures that mitigate its gas, particle and sound pollution, such as a cover – or roof – built of a combination of noise-absorbing materials, sticky & leafy greenery with solar panels above and a low-frequency vibration-deadening foundation below.

UC Davis should integrate its programs with high schools in Sacramento, and Davis should create other permanent and temporary features only possible in a small town – such as a large, calm pedestrianized zone – in order to both draw people here and to keep locals around. At the same time the super easy connection to Sacramento will make it easy for Davis people to visit the capitol so that they have less reason to live there.

Finally, the City of Davis should expressly forbid through its new General Plan the development of slowly-murderous, low-density, suburban-style projects like West Davis Active Adult Community and anything else that would normally appear in any city, anywhere — anti-sustainable dreck, symbolic of a town and governance structure empty of soul, creativity and true compassion. I am really happy that WDAAC will be defeated this November and admire the audacity of the full City Council – including its members who voted to bring it the ballot – in condemning it, existentially.

A light rail line between Sacramento and Davis is a huge undertaking, and very expensive because it couldn’t run along the ground, it would have to be on an elevated trestle like I-80 and the Union Pacific main line because that area is a massive weir–it is a runoff channel for water from the Sacramento Valley. The only time it doesn’t flood is during really bad droughts. Because that area is a weir, it will never be developed, so you won’t have passenger stops long the way and never will have them. Generally, light rail costs about $20 million per track per mile (the same as two lanes of highway) assuming it’s on the ground–but an elevated structure probably costs 3-4 times as much. So it’s a whole lot of expense that will probably never justify the cost with passenger traffic.

Trestles also cause other problems–during floods, debris gets caught against them and they impede the flow of water. The old Sacramento Northern trestle between Woodland and West Sacramento is planned to be removed because of its impeding effect on flood water. The SN was an electric interurban, basically the equivalent of “light rail” 100 years ago.

A better alternative might be increasing the number of Capitol Corridor trains, which run all the way to San Jose and currently allow almost-hourly service between Sacramento and Davis. They use the existing trestle, so no great increase in infrastructure expense. Passengers in West Sacramento and Midtown can take the streetcar to the station, while those in East Sacramento and Rancho Cordova can take light rail–and once the 7th & Railyards station opens on the Green Line and there is pedestrian access via the Railyards, Green Line passengers have their own way to get to the depot. In Davis, in-city shuttle buses, bike-share, or a streetcar loop to campus could facilitate moving people around in Davis and to the campus. You can carry all the passengers and get all the utility for a lower price–and spend the money where it is needed building streetcar and shuttle bus networks to get people to the heavy commuter rail depots. Capitol Corridor also has other amenities that light rail doesn’t have–like Wi-Fi, bathrooms and a cafe car.

The causeway is an excellent application for an ultra-light rail system that piggybacks on the existing highway infrastructure. No need to build new bridges and as it would remove cars from the roadway, no need to add new lanes to the existing causeway.

Adding more Capital Corridor trains is currently not feasible as the existing UP mainline’s trestle is already operating at or near capacity. Expanding the trestle, or removing the freight trains from this line, as has been suggested, would be extremely expensive propositions and are equally unlikely.

The only “ultra-light” rail system to be built on the Causeway is so light it literally has NO weight, and is called a bus system.

Correct mostly on Capital Corridor. It is not at capacity, but all the slots UPRR is required to give the Capitol Corridor have been used between Martinez and Oakland. A few local trains could be run that don’t go to Martinez, but those would have very low ridership and thus very high operating costs.

That’s fantastic, Don — and to be clear I was just doing some retroactive science fiction there as if there was still no major transport connection aside from a ferry… I was not in any way implying that there should be a second rail network. I am hopeful that Capitol Corridor’s plan to take over and electrify the UP ROW will eventually come to pass, and in the meantime – building on what Alan said – do whatever I can to have a dedicated express bus lane on I-80 – whether or not it’s widened at parts – between Davis and Sac, with whatever services make the most sense (I am thinking point-to-point, for a very predictable trip duration.) This will put a lot of demands on land use if there’s too much park & ride for private cars, so good alternatives will be necessary.

> A few local trains could be run that don’t go to Martinez, but those would have very low ridership and thus very high operating costs.

Thinking more about the above statement I made earlier, it may not be correct. I believe that train slots are considered “full” whether a train goes from one end of the corridor to the other or only over a portion of it. So by contract, the Capitol Corridor is “full”, if not at capacity.

The only way around this is to conduct sufficient investment that UPRR considers that they have been more than compensated by the loss of freight corridor capacity than any additional passenger train slots take. This could be many tens of millions for oven one additional round-trip, and could easily go into the $100’s of millions for a significant increase in Capitol Corridor frequency, NOT TO MENTION the purchase of additional equipment and locomotives.

David, are you serious? Davis is a bedroom community suburb of city. It has the population of a city, but not the core components of a city. If it is a city, it is one whose two legs have been amputated.

“The bad news is that, increasingly, the university is looking elsewhere for expansion opportunities.”

I do not share your view that it is bad news to place “expansion opportunities” in the most appropriate location. The new rehabilitation center with collaboration between UCDMC and a private firm is a good example of placing a public private enterprise in a location that makes the most sense even if it does mean bypassing Davis.

In terms of better relations with UCD, a good start would be for UCD to communicate in a more open and honest fashion. For example, in a student housing presentation to the Board of Regents in November 2016, Interim Chancellor Ralph Hexter painted a rosy but untrue picture. Using a graph, he told the Regents that UCD was currently providing housing to 11,500 students, or 35% of the student population. However, the draft LRDP update at that point stated that UCD was providing housing to 9,400 students or 29% of the student population. That works out to a difference of 2,100 beds. When I later asked campus planner Bob Segar about Hexter’s comments, he said that Hexter got his information from the student housing office, rather than campus planning. Those numbers included master leased off-campus apartment complexes. Was this a simple mistake or a deliberate attempt by UCD administration to mislead the Regents? We’ll probably never know, but shouldn’t the top administrator make sure his facts are correct?

“In terms of better relations with UCD, a good start would be for UCD to communicate in a more open and honest fashion.”

Of equal or greater value (for creating better relations) would be for local activists and community leaders to stop spreading false claims and innuendo about the honesty and integrity of University administrators.

Like David and I suspect virtually all Davis residents, it is my hope that going forward UCD and the City of Davis and County of Yolo can establish much better open communications and a collaborative working relationship. I would suggest, however, that my comment above is not a false claim or innuendo. I saw the Interim Chancellor’s presentation on line and have the slide Hexter used in his presentation (which I can send to David as a PDF if he desires). It clearly purports to show that UCD provided housing to 11,500 students (35% of enrollment) during the 2016-17 LRDP baseline, when in fact the actual published number in the draft LRDP was 9,400 students (or 35%).

It is also absolutely true that over a year ago the City Council and the Board of Supervisors established a “2x2x2” committee that was to meet on a regular basis with 2 UCD reps to discuss the LRDP. UCD never appointed its 2 reps, so the committee did not have an opportunity to meet. This is an undisputed fact.

Some of the continued deficiencies in the LRDP the Council and Board have identified in the LRDP could have also potentially been avoided if UCD had responded more proactively and openly to the many detailed written commentaries sent by the City and County since late 2016 (along with the resolution adopted by the ASUCD calling upon UCD to adopt the “50/100” plan in the LRDP.) Again, these are facts, not innuendo or false claims.

Correction to my post of 1:04 PM: The LRDP 2016-17 baseline showed 9,400 students living on campus, which was 29% of enrollment, and not 35% as I mistakenly wrote. The Interim Chancellor had claimed that UCD was housing 35% of the student population. The difference between the 29% and 35% is attributed to students living off-campus in master leased apartment complexes such as Lexington and Adobe, which were built by private sector development interests but master leased by UCD, an action which has been depriving the City and County of property taxes if the owners have been claiming a property tax exemption. And, of course, master leasing makes such apartment projects unavailable for leasing by non-students.

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